


Holding On

by Nny



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six hugs that made them Them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/gifts).



Age 8:

Adam hugs Wensleydale in a perfunctory sort of way. The quarry is vicious sometimes, and cops don't saunter after robbers, they run, and Wensley's blood is a particularly vivid shade of red against the off-white stone. Adam hugs Wensleydale like he can squeeze the tears out of him, like he can stop it hurting through sheer Adam-ness. Weirdly, it works. 

Age 13:

Brian tangles himself around Pepper like an affectionate spider around an impossibly angry fly. And she didn't even care about what they said, and it's just _allergies_ anyway, and thirty seconds later Brian is rolling around the floor curling around the kick to the groin that she couldn't give to anyone who isn't her best friend. (He always knows what will make her feel better). 

Age 15: 

Wensley doesn't let himself hug Brian the way that he wants to. Brian has miles of limbs, an improbable amount, and it ought to be easy to hug without closeness, but Brian tugs and tugs until Wensley's roundnesses snug up against Brian's angles, contented warm breaths against the top of his head, and a hug that feels this good really oughtn't to feel so bad. He has to pull away far sooner than he wants to; can't bear the thought that Brian folds himself around other people like this, that it means practically nothing at all. 

(Brian doesn't hold anyone else like this, no one at all). 

Age 15:

Pepper forgets about her hedgehog spikiness, the space she cultivates with the rigidity of her limbs and the pointiness of her elbows. She's of a height with Wensleydale but far far narrower, still slim-hipped and flat-chested even after puberty hit with a vengeance, but she still manages somehow to envelop Wensley entirely, lets him hide his face in her shoulder as he soddenly hitches whispers of things that have never been a secret at all. 

Age 18:

It's absurd. It's absurd, but it's comforting that he almost gives her a nosebleed with his shoulder, that they have to try about seven different angles before their arms seem to settle just right. Adam's awkwardness reassures Pepper and settles something deep in the back of her brain that she doesn't think about often; it brings a realness to his unreality that means she doesn't hesitate to try (three times!) to find the right angle for a kiss. 

Age 24: 

Brian's the easiest with her, which isn't something any of them expected, and he rescues her from Wensley's awkward terrified handling and hands her back to an exhausted Pepper. 

"Congratulations," he tells Adam, who grins at him. 

"You too." Brian grins and palms the back of his neck, the look of a man - as he aims a sly sideways look at Wensleydale, who's fanning himself with a Pampers - who never expected it to happen. He throws out a long arm and grabs Adam by the back of the neck, reels him in for a tight and heartfelt hug. 

"Thanks," he whispers, almost sub-vocally, almost as though he doesn't mean to say it at all. "Thanks, Adam." 

"I swear," says Adam, honesty in all the perfect lines of him, "it was all you."


End file.
